Theo

MP3 Audio CD. Theo

CHAPTER I.

PREPARING FOR A JOURNEY.


A heavy curtain of yellow fog rolled and drifted over the waste of
beach, and rolled and drifted over the sea, and beneath the curtain the
tide was coming in at Downport, and two pair of eyes were watching it.
Both pair of eyes watched it from the same place, namely, from the
shabby sitting-room of the shabby residence of David North, Esq.,
lawyer, and both watched it without any motive, it seemed, unless that
the dull gray waves and their dull moaning were not out of accord with
the watchers' feelings. One pair of eyes--a youthful, discontented black
pair--watched it steadily, never turning away, as their owner stood in
the deep, old-fashioned window, with both elbows resting upon the broad
sill; but the other pair only glanced up now and then, almost furtively,
from the piece of work Miss Pamela North, spinster, held in her slender,
needle-worn fingers.

There had been a long silence in the shabby sitting-room for some
time--and there was not often silence there. Three rampant,
strong-lunged boys, and as many talkative school-girls, made the house
of David North, Esq., rather a questionable paradise. But to-day, being
half-holiday, the boys were out on the beach digging miraculous
sand-caves, and getting up miraculous piratical battles and excursions
with the bare-legged urchins so numerous in the fishermen's huts; and
Joanna and Elinor had been absent all day, so the room left to Theo and
her elder sister was quiet for once.

It was Miss Pamela herself who broke the stillness. "Theo," she said,
with some elder-sister-like asperity, "it appears to me that you might
find something better to do than to stand with your arms folded, as you
have been doing for the last half hour. There is a whole bas